Mark Aurel (born April 26, 121 in Rome; † March 17, 180 in Vindobona or Sirmium), also Marc Aurel or Marcus Aurelius, was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and, as a philosopher, the last important representative of the younger Stoics. As princeps and successor to his adoptive father Antoninus Pius, he called himself Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. In many respects, his reign ended a phase of internal and external stability and prosperity for the Roman Empire, the era of the so-called adoptive emperors. Marcus Aurelius was the last of them, because his son Commodus was a natural heir to the role of ruler.
Marcus Aurelius set domestic political accents in legislation and jurisprudence to ease the situation of the disadvantaged in Roman society at the time, especially slaves and women. He had to face extraordinary challenges with regard to the catastrophic flooding of the Tiber, the confrontation with the Antonine Plague and the spontaneous persecution of Christians within the Roman Empire. After a long period of peace, he had to take action again on several fronts against invading enemies at the imperial borders. In particular, the east of the empire was threatened by the Parthians, over whom Marcus Aurelius's co-emperor Lucius Verus triumphed, and the Danube region by various Germanic tribes. Marcus Aurelius therefore spent the last decade of his life primarily in the field camp. Here he wrote the self-reflections that present him to posterity as a philosopher-emperor and which are sometimes counted as part of world literature.